INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: March 5, 1998

Correction Appended

A lawsuit filed yesterday in Federal court in Newark accuses the Ford Motor Company of having profited from the forced labor of thousands of civilians at a truck factory of its German subsidiary during World War II.

The suit, which seeks class-action status, contends that profits from the truck factory were retained by Ford's German subsidiary after the war, and asks that this money, along with punitive damages, be distributed to surviving workers.

The case, which did not seek a specific sum as compensation, was filed by Melvyn I. Weiss, a New York lawyer, on behalf of a Belgian survivor. Mr. Weiss is also representing some survivors of the Nazis and estates of victims who have sued Swiss banks for keeping their assets after the war.

Ford said in a statement that over the years it had reviewed what happened at the factory, in Cologne, and concluded that it was under Nazi control and out of touch with the corporate headquarters throughout the war. Dividends from the German operations' profits were accumulated but never paid, and their value was cut substantially by currency devaluation after the war, the company said. The Ford statement did not address profits not paid out as dividends.

Ford said, however that it had begun another investigation of the issue. ''We have instituted an active and deeper search of Ford archives in the U.S. to see if there are additional facts available than those used by earlier historians,'' said John Rintamaki, Ford's corporate secretary, who cautioned that many records in Cologne had been destroyed by fires during and after the war. ''When we receive the results of this effort, we will proceed from there.''

Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, said that yesterday's suit was the first to accuse an American corporation of profiting from forced labor in Germany during World War II. Recent court decisions in Germany have partly lifted the statute of limitations for suits involving forced labor during World War II, and the American courts will have to decide whether that shift allows lawsuits to proceed here, Mr. Steinberg added.

Mr. Weiss said he had already begun investigating other corporations that could be the target of lawsuits charging forced labor without pay by civilians and even slave labor by concentration camp inmates. Possible targets include Daimler-Benz, the German parent of Mercedes-Benz, he said. Mr. Weiss has filed suit against a range of large corporations over the years, on a number of issues.

The lawsuit identified only one plaintiff in the class, a Belgian woman named Elsa Iwanowa. Mr. Weiss said that he filed the suit in Newark because it was nearby and the Federal court there had a less crowded docket than others. Ford has operations in New Jersey and around the world.

The suit contends that Ford's management in the United States was aware of the forced labor at its German factory, and that the factory's board of directors urged the German Government before the war not to confiscate the factory in the event of hostilities. Unlike many American companies' properties, the factory was not confiscated, but a Nazi ''custodian'' was appointed.

Ford contended in its statement that the appointment of the custodian, ordered by a Nazi court in Cologne, meant that the company had lost control of the factory. But Mr. Weiss said in a telephone interview that the naming of the custodian was only a ceremonial act.

The lawsuit contended that half of the Cologne factory's nearly 6,000 workers had been forced to work without pay during the last years of the war; Ford said the workers might have been paid. The workers included French prisoners of war as well as Russian, Ukrainian, Italian and Belgian civilians and some inmates from the concentration camp at Buchenwald, according to the suit. Few of the forced laborers were Jewish, Mr. Weiss said.

Ford said that previous historical research had found that forced laborers were treated better at the Cologne factory than elsewhere.

The suit accused Ford of having received special treatment from Germany because of a personal relationship between Adolf Hitler and the senior Henry Ford, a longtime admirer of Germany and outspoken anti-Semite. Today's lawsuit said that he had sent annual birthday gifts to Hitler and been decorated by him in 1938 with the Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle.

The Ford statement today did not discuss Henry Ford, but company officials said tonight that they had no evidence that the company had received special treatment because of a personal relationship. The company did mention that in the United States, it had built 86,865 B-24 bombers during World War II.

Correction: March 6, 1998, Friday An article in Business Day yesterday about a lawsuit accusing the Ford Motor Company of profiting from forced labor in Nazi Germany misstated the number of B-24 bombers that Ford built for the United States during World War II. It was 8,685, not 86,865. The company mentioned the higher figure in a statement in response to the lawsuit on Wednesday, but corrected the number yesterday.